Greetings LemonCloud!

Today we're excited to announce Skyblock's next big update - and finally, the return of Skyblock Water!

On Saturday 23rd October, Skyblock Water and Skyblock Fire will both reset, bringing a huge list of improvements to the server. We expect to release this update at 8 PM BST (to prepare, we'll shut down the old servers earlier in the day). Click here to see what time it is in your time zone. The countdown is on!

Reset Details

When the reset happens, unfortunately, most of your progressional data will be lost: in-game money, mcMMO levels, inventory, enderchest, vaults, homes, island, minions, etc.

Don't worry though, you will keep: ranks, kit access, titles, island upgrades, and any other permanent access packages you've bought from the store.

Changelog

After many months of development and a couple of weeks of internal testing, the team is pleased to reveal this update's changelog...

Updated to 1.17

Skyblock now natively runs on the latest version of Minecraft, 1.17! You can still connect with older versions but we recommend playing on 1.17 for the best possible experience.

You can find new blocks and items on the server /shop. Glow Squid Spawner anybody? 👀

New Spawn

Harry the builder has been busy working on a new spawn for Skyblock! As the central place for players to begin their Skyblock journey, we designed the spawn to have a clean open layout, ensuring easy navigation.

To give the spawn that warm cozy feeling, it features little village houses dotted around with character scenes to bring the build to life!

PvP Arena

It's time for a fresh look at Skyblock's PvP Arena! Take a peek at the brand new LemonCloud themed arena!

Travel to the arena and fight by typing /pvp

Skyblock Core

One of the biggest parts of this update is our new Skyblock core plugin. We've coded a complete in-house plugin from the ground up, giving us full control over features and performance.

Development of this plugin began almost a year ago when we started noticing problems with the current Skyblock core which was mostly old public code. The most notable problem we faced was how much storage space Minecraft region files use up (a lot). For a gamemode like Skyblock that has an ever-growing world as new players join and generate islands, this became an increasing problem.

For insight, as of now, Skyblock Fire's world data is consuming 830 GB of storage space. This issue contributed to Skyblock Water's corruption and temporary closure, and we're so relieved to finally release our new and improved plugin which fixes it.

Our new Skyblock core plugin uses the slime world format, developed by Hypixel. Slime worlds are a much more efficient way of storing world data, and we could see our world storage usage be under 10 GB - a huge difference!

We've aimed to make your Skyblock experience familiar, but better.

Starting off, you now have the choice of island size and biome. Pick a Small, Medium, or Large island, and then decide whether you want a Grassy, Snowy, or Desert island. Keep in mind that your island's weather is based on your biome!

All islands now have their own world. This means your island will be centered around the 0,0 coordinate.

Islands also have a Nether and End world which can only be accessed by building portals. All portal materials can be bought from the /shop

Island Leveling

We wanted to make island levels more prestigious, and meaningful. For this reason, we've added a system whereby each level is progressively harder to get than the last.

For example, this means that getting from level 9 to level 10 may require you to place 4 more emerald blocks (on top of what you already have), but getting from level 99 to level 100 may require you to place an additional 50 emerald blocks. And so on...

To make things easier, we created a new /is level command to provide a detailed insight at your island's level:

At first, players will eventually reach a level from which it becomes very hard to level up. When this happens, we are going to set a level cap on the exponential increase, so that the number of island points required to level up will be linear for higher levels, meaning it won't get any harder. This strikes a nice balance between making progression progressively harder, while not making higher levels completely impossible or too grind-y.

Who wants a medal?! It's time to grind because the top 3 islands on /is top will now have a Gold, Silver, or Bronze medal to show off!

Quests

Quests have arrived on Skyblock! Complete various tasks and get rewarded for your hard work.

The Basic Quests section is a quest line that aims to guide you through the basics of Skyblock. You must work your way through each quest to unlock the next one until you've completed them all.

The Advanced Quests are all activated by default and involve some long-term goals to work towards such as killing 1,000 players, reaching island level 50, and spending $25,000,000 in the shop 🤯

We are also working towards releasing Weekly Quests in a future update for those quest-lovers out there!

Spawner Unlocking & Mob Souls

Introducing our new unlockable spawners system!

This game-changing new feature introduces a whole new depth to Skyblock's economy.

Starting off, your island will only have access to the Chicken Spawner. In order to unlock the next spawner, the Pig Spawner, your island must collectively harvest 1,000 chicken souls.

Islands must work their way up through all spawners in order to unlock high-tier mobs. We believe this levels the playing field as players will not be able to immediately use those high-value spawners won from crates at the start.

There are restrictions in place to prevent spawners from being placed on islands if the spawner is not yet unlocked.

We're excited to see your creativity in finding efficient methods of farming all of the different mobs!

Robots

We encountered a lot of bugs and performance issues with minions since the last reset, so we decided to ditch minions and code our own version, Robots!

There isn't a huge difference, and recoding this feature was mostly for performance reasons. Robots still boast the same features, however, with added improvements and cool customization. We're implementing robot parts that can be used for crafting robots. You'll find more information about this in-game on release!

Miscellaneous Changes

• Created our own high-performance spawner entities. This means that mobs have little to no effect on the server TPS, giving us a huge performance advantage at high player counts
• Added an option to cancel coinflip games with /cf cancel
• You can now list active bounties with /bounty list
• Updated the donator rank tag colors (reverse rainbow, similar to Survival's scheme)
• Fixed the Blocks kit not being redeemable
• Improved the clear inventory confirmation. Now you only need to send the same command again rather than /ci confirm
• Redesigned the /kit menu
• Redesigned the /warp menu
• Updated the unscramble word list
• Improved unscramble's broadcast design
• Updated the /shop to include new 1.16 and 1.17 items and other economy balancing tweaks
• Added /title and /titles aliases for /tags
• Donator kit item names now include the redeemer's username. For example: "iLemon's Supreme Sword"
• The /sell command is now granted to King ranks and higher
• Added /scoreboard and /sidebar for toggling the scoreboard
• Fixed and improved the crates. Vote, Ultra, and Mega crates now open instantly
• Added a global resource pack that places the LemonCloud logo in the Escape menu and tab header. This also handles medals and other custom models
• ... dozens of other tiny fixes that we've made over the months that weren't significant enough to log

We look forward to seeing people online on Saturday for the resets of Skyblock Water & Skyblock Fire!